Occupation of Independence

Go ahead and laugh. I responded to the news about the $500 Windows RT tablet by going to Walmart to buy a second Acer Aspire One (model 722-0473) netbook. This is the first time in my life when I've o wned two computers. I panicked into concluding that, over the ne xt cou ple years, the computer industry will kill off the netbook and leave the chumps only the following sorry options : 1) $800-1000 WINTEL "ultrabooks" or , 2) $500-600 tablets based on ARM micro processors , similar to those in sm artphones, that only offer a "half-internet" experience or , 3) inexpensive 7" tablets that are basically just smartphones with out the ability to make phone calls. Or call them vending machines for media consumable s from Amazon or the iShackle s tore (Apple's iTunes) . Last but not least, 4) the usual overpriced "walled garden" at the Apple store, built around its notorious iShackle media store, and incompatible connect ors and opera

Baby Boomers should have something to say about consuming information as a way of life. When we came into this world, the great blight of television befell the world. Today, toward the end of our passage, the internet is taking over. These are two information revolutions just as big as, but far more sudden than, the invention of the alphabet or Gutenberg's movable-type printing press. Baby Boomers, destined to eventually become America's Worst Generation, started off life as the first generation raised on television. TV-haters (like me) would love to believe that that proves cause and effect. Whether you buy that or not, it is strange how uncritically many parents welcomed TV into their homes in the 1950s. Soon the living room furniture was all arranged around the TV set. Many children grew up with no restrictions on their TV habits. How ironic that many a traditional father in the 1950s kept a gun in the house to 'protect his family', you know. And yet he allowed th